You
want to optimize your marketing campaigns and get results faster. Do you need
to hire a new agency to accomplish those gains? Not necessarily. You might
achieve your objectives with better marketing automation.

Why
You Need To Have Marketing Experiments

According
to G2 Crowd, a business software
reviews website, there are more than 150 marketing automation software tools on
the market.

If
you include the options made possible by tools like Zapier,
which allows you to connect virtually any part of any application to any other
application, the possibilities expand exponentially.

How
can you make smart choices on which automation tools are right for your market?
Reading reviews and lists of product features helps. Yet that doesn’t tell you
much on how that tool will behave in your environment.

To
help you evaluate marketing tools quickly, we recommend carrying out five day
experiments. Each quarter, experiment with a new marketing automation app, tool
or process. If you find something that works well, continue implementation. If
it doesn’t, you have only invested a few days in testing it .

For
marketing leaders and managers, there is another reason to pursue marketing
experiments. It is an excellent way to grow your team with a challenge. It is
also an opportunity for your team to own a project and lead it. Just think
about your junior marketing staff. They may have joined the organization and
spent most of their time working on marketing campaigns and projects that
others have created. With this process, everyone on the project team will have
the chance to work on a new project.

Are
Five Days Enough For An Experiment?

A
single work week is enough time to launch a small project and test the results.
For the best results, prepare in advance. Complete other projects ahead of
time. Let your key stakeholders in sales, operations and other areas know that
you will return to their requests after your experimentation week is over. With
that preparation work done, get started with the steps below.

What
if you find that an interesting marketing automation tool simply cannot be
implemented in a week? There are two ways to address that reality. First, you
could set aside those tools and focus on smaller scale Software As A Service
tools instead. Look for companies that have a pricing page on their website
rather than custom pricing developed by a sales representative. Second, if you
want to pursue a larger scale solution, adapt this framework to develop an
in-depth demo with the vendor.

Schedule Tip: Determine steps 1-2 on the first day of the week. That will give you three days to run the experiment itself.

Step
1) Choose a marketing objective

You
need to know what you are aiming at in your experiment.

Do you want to move the needle on a
tactical measure like increasing email marketing open rates?

Alternatively, you might focus on
using marketing automation to further a different goal such as developing your
marketing automation program.

Do you want to save time on
marketing tasks like cleaning or segmenting lists?

Tip:
Do not let your enthusiasm for a shiny new tool dictate your objective!

You
have a few options available to consider depending on your risk appetite.

Launch An Experiment With Your Current Platform.

If you have a powerful platform in place like Oracle Eloqua,
consider testing one of its capabilities. We have found that few clients have
fully exploited all of their existing platform’s features. For example, you may want to explore the Oracle Sales Cloud Integration app enhancements
available in Eloqua. This is the lowest risk type of
marketing automation experiment because you are not adding any new
software.

Extend Your Platform With An Add-On or App.

Did you know that you can use third-party apps to extend Eloqua’s
capabilities? To find out more, check out our related article: 7 must-have apps
for Oracle Eloqua. This is a medium risk marketing automation experiment where
you combine something known and something unknown.

Experiment With A Brand New App.

With
this approach, the sky’s the limit. Since there are more than 100 marketing
automation tools on the market, you may feel overwhelmed with the available
options. Refer back to your objective from step one to guide your choice.

Since you are moving into new territory, this is the highest risk
marketing automation experiment. Don’t worry – you are limiting your risk
exposure by keeping this to the one-week timeframe.

3) Launch the test

Now
that you have chosen your objective and risk level, it is time to launch the
test!

If
you are in a risk averse organization, start by running a simulation with with
dummy data to identify technical problems. However, do not let that be your
entire test.

As a rule of thumb, we recommend running your
marketing automation test with 1,000 prospects. That will give your experiment
some measure of statistical validity.

4)
Adjust the test mid-flight

As
results from your campaign come in, make adjustments as needed. This step is
critical if you see no results at all. For example, if your email open rate
drops to zero or you see zero ad impressions.

Look
for these warning signs and adjust accordingly.

Corrupt data. Before you start your marketing
automation test, create a copy of your database to experiment on. Before writing off the app, check to
see if a configuration or programming error contributed to the problem.

Non-delivery of email or advertising. Compare
delivery rates
to your standard operating model. Check if
integrations between apps are working correctly.

Technical errors. Expect these errors to happen
when you test something new. Fix as much as you can and continue with the
experiment.

Customer complaints. Use your judgment to assess
this point. Are the complaints about accessibility (e.g. a customer cannot open a web
page) or something else? If the complaints are about the copy or
offer, that doesn’t tell you anything about whether the automation experiment
was a success.

Stakeholder complaints. If other departments
complain that marketing is non-responsive to their needs during the experiment,
that’s a warning sign. You can reduce the chances of this situation by engaging
your stakeholders prior to starting the experiment.

5)
Assess the test results

At
the end of the five-day experiment, review your results. To make the most of
your review process, use the following tips.

Seek An Outside Perspective.
Invite someone from outside the experiment group to look at the results. They
will help you overcome blind spots in examining the test results.

Develop Lessons Learned. What
would you do again? What would you avoid? Integrate these lessons in your
marketing operations.

Consider Further Investment. If
your marketing experiment involved a new application or outside resource, you
have an investment decision to make. Is there
merit in scaling up the test? If so, what budget and resources would be
involved? For instance, can you double the scale of your marketing experiment
(e.g. 1,000 prospects to 2,000 prospects) to see if the experiment holds up at
scale. .

What
Should You Do If The Test Doesn’t Accomplish Results?

Don’t
feel bad if this happens! Few marketing automation experiments deliver
perfectly against expectations. While tests help you to grow, recognize their
limits. If you want to save 5% of work time or increase conversions by 1-3%,
marketing automation experiments may provide what you need.

If
you are seeking a more transformational change, you may need an outside
perspective on your business. Contact us to schedule a discussion.